Author Archives: Nicola Cameron
Taxes Are At the Accountant’s, Whee
I have just completed one of the two yearly scheduled road trips. Our accountant’s office is just a touch west of Arlington (the accountant was recommended to me by a friend when I used to work in Irving. They’re so good at what they do that we don’t want to switch to someone in Plano), which means I have an hour and a half round trip to go out there, drop off our files, and come home.
And yes, they have a secure online server where I could upload scanned files (and I have a printer that is also a scanner and will work such arcane magic), but I like the drive. For one thing, the hillsides of the various highways are usually carpeted in bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and other wildflowers, which is always pretty, and even a short road trip is kind of fun for me.
This year, however, I got the taxes finished in record time (I usually get everything done in March) and the hillsides showed nary a bluebonnet as I drove down 181. Bit of a bummer, but there’s a nice field nearby that usually gets carpeted with bluebonnets and I can always get my fix when that blooms.
While in previous years we usually got some pretty tasty returns due to me having a small business and a home office, I’m hearing that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018 is going to adversely affect a lot of people for fiscal year 2022 so I’m not holding out hope for a big return. If we don’t owe anything, I’ll be happy with that.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
To be honest, there were no grand romantic gestures here in Casa Cameron, which I know may be unexpected for a romance writer. But neither of us were in the mood for such gestures, nor do we need them. Ramón and I are ridiculously affectionate all year round so we don’t need an official day for those kind of activities. Also, flowers need to be put out of range of the J Crew which is problematic, and we already had chocolates. *shrug*
So today pretty much consisted of working, changing out J.J.’s peed-upon bedding, fetching Thai for dinner, and generally relaxing. I did wind up churning out 1,210 words on Crystal Blade, which felt really good, and I now have a solid plotline of what should happen in the second half of the book.
In other writing news I’m picking at the outlines for High Tide (Olympic Cove Five) and To Love a Wild Swan (Hidden Empire Three). Mage of Fire (Two Thrones Five) is still simmering in my subconscious and with everything else going on I don’t want to poke at that quite yet. Once I have Crystal Blade done, however, I’m going to try an experiment and work on Crystal Reflection (Paladins of Crystal Three), Tide, and Swan in rotation. Since the stories are all so very different I’m hoping that I can stay fresh by shifting from book to book depending on my mood of the day.
And if it turns out that I’m just muddling along without getting ANYTHING done I’ll switch back to doing one book at a time. We’ll see.
Crystal Blade Is Chugging Along
Man, I really did forget how much murky the palace politics are in this one. I don’t know if I need to ratchet some of that back or not—I’ve got notes to keep an eye on it during editing and make sure it doesn’t overwhelm Crystal’s growing relationship with her guys. Must remember this is a Why Choose romance, not Game of Thrones and I can save the political machinations for the Melanie books.
That being said, Blade is currently at a smidge under 40K. Since the whole book is slated to come in at 80K or thereabouts I’m pretty much at the halfway point, which is fun in this particular book because it’s when Crystal finds out who her fathers were and this knowledge … well, she’s happy about one of the guys. Moderately horrified about the other two, but hey, there’s no drama if all of her fathers turn out to be lovable, right? It also sets up a situation that will come to fruition in Crystal Reflection (Book 3), and I can’t tell you any more about that but muwahahahaha…
I also learned today that my writing process is pretty much the same as the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s, which makes me feel both happy (because if it worked so spectacularly for him, it can work spectacularly for me) and wistful (because I knew Terry and I still miss him).
Mrgh
Tax numbers have been crunched. Worksheet has been filled out for the accountant. Brains are mush. Hope you weren’t expecting more than that today.
Oh, yeah, Ramón took me out to a local Mexican restaurant as a celebration of getting the numbers done/early Valentine’s Day dinner. We were rather surprised to see the place almost completely empty until I noticed the football game playing over the bar and realized today is Superbowl Sunday. Hey, if the Bears aren’t playing I don’t care.
Weekends Are For Bookwork
Namely taking a good look at my AMS ads and ruthlessly culling anything that hasn’t brought in any sales in the last six months. Ads are easily my biggest expenditure, and while I don’t mind spending on them I want them to work for me, not gobbling up income without bringing in sales.
I’ve put limits on every portfolio so that when a certain amount is spent it pauses until the next month, but ads aren’t something you can just set and forget—you need to keep an eye on them, make sure they’re working, and prune them when they stop. It’ll be interesting when I crunch the numbers tomorrow for the taxes to see how much I spent on ads in 2022 versus income. I suspect the ratio ain’t gonna be all that great, another reason to start getting ruthless with the pruning.
So yeah, tomorrow is going to be dedicated to getting the tax numbers ready for the accountant, and next weekend I want to set up the closet in our bedroom (it’s a large walk-in space so I won’t be cramped) and start recording Shadow of the Swan as an audiobook. I’m also trying to work out how I want to sell it—I would prefer not to use Audible, especially since they’ve reduced the costs of audiobooks on their own stick, and Jeff Bezos doesn’t need any more of my money anyway. I know I can start a Shopify story and deliver the audiobook file via BookFunnel, but Shopify also takes a big chunk out of the audiobook cost and I don’t actually need a separate store—that’s what my website with its book pages is for. PayHip has also been recommended to me—apparently PayPal is the absolute best way to do it but it’s supposed to be a nightmare to set up for digital items. Must do some more investigation while I’m getting the audiobook ready.
Aaaand I’m on Spoutible
If you’ve started an account on Spoutible, you can find me at https://spoutible.com/YesItsNicolaC. It’s slow so far and still a little glitchy (my spouts aren’t appearing on my profile) but that’s understandable—I suspect they’re processing a LOT of new users. Now I have to check the App Store and see if they have an OS app for it yet.
In other news I’m back at work on Crystal Blade and oh, it is so good to be back in Uskela and dealing with palace intrigue, murky politics, and those lovely, lovely paladins. I seriously missed these wacky kids and it’s great to watch as they desperately try to find a way out of marrying Crystal’s cousin Veronika (who I kinda feel sorry for—she was shoved into a role she never really wanted and made to feel like it was the whole of her identity so of course she’s going to be upset when a contender for the throne shows up. Because if she feels relief, what does that say about her?). Meanwhile Crystal is still trying to wrap her head around her parentage (at least half of it) and what that means for her future. But I have utmost faith that she’ll be able to figure it out and wind up with five gorgeous consorts as a result.
It Is Done
Welp, Shifter Woods: Claw technically turned out to be a novel as it clocks in at a touch over 42,000 words, but I declared it soup at 5:30 AM this morning (I’m backdating this post so that it’s dated as February 9, just in case anyone’s confused).
Claw is also quite a bit longer than I expected, but with the FMC having to discover her wolf shifter heritage I really needed more space for all that. I am going to let this simmer over the weekend while I work on Crystal Blade, give it another pass, then send it off to the editor and betas. While I’m doing that I’ll start work on the Esposito County Shifters omnibus edition cover (I can’t go with just a Photoshopped box set cover because this will be coming out in print), then once Shifter Woods: Growl comes out of KU I’ll publish all the individual novellas and the omnibus wide.
Why wide when I specifically went over to KU last year with the bulk of my titles and saw my income jump? Because more and more authors are getting their accounts yanked over KU titles that have been pirated (technically having a KU title on a pirate site violates Amazon rules because your KU title is supposed to be exclusive to Amazon. But Amazon is penalizing the wrong people over this, and nobody has time for that crap).
Also, people I trust in the indie publishing business are now recommending that indie authors go wide if possible because it’s looking more and more like KU’s days are numbered. I still have my Smashwords/D2D and Google Play accounts so taking the ECS titles wide will just mean a couple days’ work of creating or updating the non-Amazon versions before publishing them. Plus I keep hearing that there’s a rather tasty market for omnibus editions of a series on the non-Amazon platforms, so now that I’m about to possess an omnibus edition of a series I would like to take advantage of that.
Mind you, I’m not pulling everything out of KU. I’m still making money from page reads, especially on the Hidden Empire and Paladins of Crystal books, and I don’t want to shoot myself in the foot by taking those titles out of KU. But the ECS titles will be a good way of dipping my toe back into wide publishing and judging for myself if I want to move more titles (like To My Muse, which is a standalone) wide.
I Am So Close
Maybe another day or two and Shifter Woods: Claw will be in shape to head off to the editor and betas. Which is good because my writing brain is ITCHING to get back to work on Crystal Blade and High Tide, plus I also want to start outlining To Love a Wild Swan. I’m also tempted to go with a trio for that one because hey, Nessa is a queen of Faerie and doesn’t have to stick with Victorian social rules. If she wants a Fae lord and a hot djinn as her consorts, why not?
I also think that my Patreon short story for March (yeah, yeah, I know. But I already missed the February deadline so I’ll launch it then) will be the springboard for To Love a Wild Swan. Fyodora and Callum arrive in Cairo and meet up with Louisa and Henry, they get involved with a Romeo and Juliet conflict between some Egyptian deities and a djinn clan, and the denouement of the story leads into Swan.
As for April, I’m torn between using my F*ck the Patriarchy novella for my Patreon or setting it as the free story that new newsletter subscribers receive. Since it’s a Why Choose story and not everyone enjoys that subgenre I may use it for the Patreon and come up with something more general for the new subscriber story. I haven’t written anything in the Two Thrones series for quite a while—I think I may do something set there, maybe a peek at how Amelie and Alain are settling in, or Matthias deciding to gift his overworked wife with a seductive holiday. I’ve been asked to do a story regarding Darius and Lars’s wedding and honeymoon but I think I want to save that for its own novella.
Yay for Gift Boxes!
Back in December I
had entered Siobhan Muir‘s Hot Teddy Bear Hero Gift Basket giveaway, as you do, and much to my shock I won!
So today I received a big box with four of her books (Flip the Trope: Endless Summer, The Samhain Soldier, Broken Chains, The Beltane Witch), a nifty cell phone wrist purse with stickers and jewelry, a magnificent ceramic hot drink glass with all kinds of tea samples, a branded mask, and a beautiful Bearifairy (shown at right) who I have named Isabeau Bear. She now sits with my Edgar Allan Poe doll and watches me as I write, which is only appropriate.
I also got this beautiful lightweight shawl in a pale apple green with delicate beads along the ends. The moment I saw it I knew my Muse would be wearing it in future TikTok videos because it goes perfectly with her hair.
So a big THANK YOU goes out to Siobhan Muir for this amazing swag (and I plan on trying the tea tonight).
In other news it’s cold and rainy out there right now so soup is on the menu for tonight, I’m continuing to plow ahead on Claw, and I think once the omnibus is done and I have the print version ready I’m gonna do my own book box giveaway with swag and other nifty things. Because it’s always important to keep the love flowing, you know?
Gracious
I must be feeling better—I edited two chapters of Claw, did the Daiso run, vacuumed out all the master bathroom drawers and installed the new inserts, organized all of our stuff in there, made dinner, and modified a sleeve pattern and cut out the pieces for a new dress jacket (rust red twill, and this is going to be gorgeous).
Of course, I also had to do my daily loads of laundry due to the Incontinent Cat, listen to him scream at me despite the fact that I’d bathed him, changed out his bedding, given him fresh water and treats, and dabbed ointment on his ouchie pooper duper, wipe up a full glass of water that Jasmine knocked over in the library, and try to pay adequate attention to all the other cats. But that’s part and parcel of being staff to the J Crew.
Now I just have to do some TikTok videos, update my reader’s group on Facebook, make some other social media posts, and I’ll be done for the day, whee!
Nicola Cameron Writes 